Prior art workers have attempted to reduce the caloric intake from foods by a host of procedures including, inter alia, appetite suppressants and through the use of starch blockers. The major disadvantages of starch blockers involve pharmacologic reactions, special dietary requirements, serious biological side-effects in some people, and the demonstrated lack of effectiveness of the treatment.
More recently, the use of perfluorooctyl bromide to reduce the caloric intake from foods was suggested in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Volume 66, No. 6, page 907 (June 1977). It has now been discovered, however, that perfluorooctyl bromide is contraindicated for inhibiting the absorption of nutritional elements through the upper intestinal tract and that the oral administration of perfluorooctyl bromide may not be entirely safe. Perfluorooctyl bromide is a non-polar molecule having slight electrical charges thereon, from which the bromine atom can be cleaved in the human body. The toxicity of free bromine is well documented. Also perfluorooctyl bromide has two low vapor pressure to be expelled from the intestine in a reasonable time.
Perfluoro compounds have long been known for their chemical stability and their oxygen-carrying capacity. As such, they have been tried and used in clinical studies as substitutes for whole blood or plasma in intravenous injection. In fact, an emulsion of one such perfluoro compound has been subjected to clinical test as reported, for instance, by Dr. Clark in the publication Blood Substitutes and Plasma Expanders, Alan R. Liss, Inc., New York, NY 1978, pp. 69-80. Similar experiments are reported in a number of other publications at about the same time, particularly emanating from work done in Japan at the Kobe National Hospital in Kobe, Japan. The emulsion reported in the aforesaid publications is, however, of no usefulness as an orally ingestible composition for the purpose of coating the intestinal wall. Indeed, the emulsions useful for intravenous injection are contraindicated for the use of this invention since the amount of perfluoro compound is far too small to have any useful effect, and the electolytes employed in the intravenous solution can be cathartic when taken orally in sufficient quantity. Finally, the emulsion proposed for intravenous use is far too costly to ever be used in any useful or practical sense as a calorie inhibitor in a dietary sense.